CHICAGO – Ann Lurie served as a critical care nurse at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago before marriage and family intervened.
It was an experience she never forgot, and one she’s remembering through a $100 million donation toward the construction of a new facility.
The gift, announced last month, will rank as the second largest donation ever to an American healthcare organization, according to data from the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy.
Children’s Memorial plans to build a new facility by 2012 in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood, in the North Michigan Avenue area and on the same campus as Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The healthcare provider is early in the planning process for the new facility, said Patrick Magoon, president and CEO of Children’s Memorial Medical Center, the parent organization.
“There’s really a critical need for a highly specialized children’s hospital in the community,” he said.
Children’s Memorial offers pediatric training for Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Pediatric students at that school now travel a couple miles to the existing facility in Chicago’s Lincoln Park area. The new location will provide opportunities for enhanced academic and research collaboration, as well as closer integration with nearby healthcare facilities, Children’s executives say.
Besides improving transportation logistics, the new facility, to be named the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, is expected to offer state-of-the-art technology and medical equipment.
Lurie is president of Lurie Investments, president and treasurer of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation and president of Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics, Inc. After the death of her husband, Robert H. Lurie, in 1990, she devoted herself to raising their six children and became a committed benefactor to many causes in healthcare, education, social services and the arts.
“Our future depends on our children and the generations of children after them,” she said. “I feel that we have an obligation to be supportive of advances in pediatric medical care that will ensure the health of those children.”